Ottawa residents who want to protect neighbourhoods from over-scaled and ugly development must roll up their sleeves and get involved in the political and planning process, says a longtime Montreal urban activist.

“Do not think that it is the city-employed planners who are going to negotiate with the developers a development project in the public interest,” says Dimitri Roussopoulos, founder and CEO of Urban Ecology, a think-tank on sustainable urban development.

“A lot of what happens in neighbourhoods and cities is driven by very influential and powerful economic interests,” he told a public meeting on intensification at City Hall last week.